Hawaii Pacific University sold its 132-acre Windward Oahu campus to Castle Medical Center on Tuesday in a deal that will allow the college to consolidate its campus downtown and the hospital to expand its health care offerings.

Neither party volunteered financial terms of a sale that has been in the works for nearly six months. The county last assessed the value of the land and buildings of the Hawaii Loa campus at $8.4 million.

No immediate changes are expected at the sprawling campus at the foot of the Pali. Under the sales agreement, Castle will lease the property back to HPU for three years with an option to extend for up to two more years.

The transition period will allow both HPU and Castle the time to plan for the conversion, officials said.

HPU President John Gotanda said he would expect the transition to last at least four years, allowing time for the university to find space for classrooms, dorm rooms and other facilities downtown.

Proceeds from the sale will be reinvested in the university and earmarked for new facilities and accommodations downtown, Gotanda said.

“There are a lot of great options in downtown Honolulu,” he said. “There are a lot of good deals and a lot of space available. We think downtown is terrific.”

The move will make HPU the largest user of real estate in downtown Honolulu, he said, and help transform the area into an even more vibrant neighborhood.

And with a majority of HPU’s lease space coming due in four years, the university has an opportunity to leverage its buying power to remake the footprint of the downtown campus while maintaining the Aloha Tower Marketplace property as the university’s centerpiece, Gotanda said.

“We love our current space,” he said, “but that doesn’t mean we can’t take the opportunity to think and dream about what can be the best space for HPU.”

In addition to residence halls, the Windward campus is home to the College of Natural and Computational Sciences and the College of Nursing and Health Sciences. The campus also has soccer and softball fields, meeting spaces, a dining hall and a library, along with plenty of parking.

HPU currently spends about $700,000 a year operating a shuttle between the downtown and Windward campuses, Gotanda said.

Nearly 200 students are now housed at the Hawaii Loa campus, while 267 students live downtown.

Gotanda said HPU will have to find 50,000 square feet of space downtown, plus enough dorm space for 200 or more students.

The space HPU currently leases downtown, not including Aloha Tower Marketplace, is about 200,000 square feet.

Kathryn Raethel, president and CEO of the Kailua hospital, said the three- to five-year lease-back time will allow Castle to conduct strategic planning to figure out exactly how best to utilize the property.

There are many options available to the hospital, she said, including establishing centers for its orthopedic, geriatric and wellness programs.

“We’re excited,” Raethel said. “It is a great location for Windward residents.”

Owned and operated by Adventist Health, a Seventh-Day Adventist health care system, Castle is a 160-bed hospital with 1,000 employees and 300 physicians on 10 acres on Ulukahiki Street.

In 2015 Castle reported more than 8,500 inpatient discharges and 64,000 outpatient visits, while its emergency department received 34,500 visits.

Raethel said the hospital plans to retain its existing site, about 2 miles away from the HPU campus.

The university’s 2014 master plan called for consolidating academic programs into a single urban campus, and the university had already been expanding its academic offerings downtown.

HPU bought the buildings at Aloha Tower Marketplace in 2013 and invested more than $40 million renovating and revitalizing the waterfront property with dormitories and classrooms.

The influx of many more students will change the look and feel of downtown, Gotanda said.

“They will make things exciting,” he said.

HPU has a combined campus enrollment of 6,741 students, including 1,116 graduate students.

Gotanda said the university’s research indicates that students prefer a unified campus. He said the effort could even raise HPU’s enrollment.

“But we’re not looking to grow by leaps and bounds. We like being a midsize institution. It allows us to be nimble and adapt our programs to a changing market and have a personalized learning environment,” he said.

Gotanda said the downtown campus is ideally located near businesses and government, offering easy access to “a wealth of knowledge in the community” and opportunities for additional internships and mentoring programs.

Consolidating the campus will also help bolster HPU’s interdisciplinary and team teaching efforts, which are exposing students to different perspectives and preparing them for the future, he said.